Abstract

The inclusion of ions doped into the storage phosphor results in increased purity of the host material as well as an improvement in the linearity of the photostimulated luminescence (PSL) intensity versus the x-ray irradiation dose. Films produced by pulsed laser deposition(PLD) also show similar results, indicating that PLD is a powerful technique for producing high quality, high purity thin films. As a result, the PSL dose response is more linear in the thin films than in the powder samples. The emission intensity of in the phosphors increases with the increasing time of x-ray irradiation while the emission intensity of remains almost constant. This result may be explained by considering the reduction of impurity ions following trapping of the photoexcited electrons. The results demonstrate that these materials are not only potentially useful for medical imaging but also show promise for use in radiation dosimetry.

Received 19 October 2004Accepted 28 January 2005Published online 31 March 2005

Acknowledgments:

The authors would like to thank Nomadics, Inc., the National Science Foundation (NSF, Grant No. DMI-0132030), the National Institutes of Health (NIH, Grant Nos. 1R43CA94403-1, 1R43CA110091-01) and the Department of Energy (DOE, DE-FG02-04ER84023) for grants. Part of the research described in this article was performed at the W. R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a national scientific user facility sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research and located at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). PNNL is operated by Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy under contract, No. DE-AC06-76RLO1830. The authors thank Dr. Paul Weckler, Dr. Nachiket Kotwaliwale, and Dr. Jeyamkondan Subbiah for their assistance with x-ray luminescence measurements.